Monday, July 14, 2008

i was one of the fortunate ones that gets to stay. one of the ones who wont be around going forward is our publisher David Hiller. i havent been around all that long and i am the last person who would know what sort of publisher he was, but i will say this – he knew my name on the beginning of my very first day. he took this picture with me at the end of my first day. any time he saw me in the halls he’d say, “hi tony, how are the blogs? one of these days you will have to help me out on mine.” thats pretty impressive to me, especially since we have hundreds and hundreds of people who work here, many of whom have been here for ages.

Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller resigned today after a 21-month tenure that included the departure of two Times editors and plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in the newspaper’s history amid a continuing slide in advertising revenue.

Tribune Co. — which owns The Times and other media assets, including the Chicago Tribune and KTLA-TV Channel 5, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team — named no successor to Hiller.

Hiller was the third Times publisher named since the newspaper was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune. He succeeded Jeffrey M. Johnson, who lost his job after publicly resisting cost-cutting measures ordered by the parent company in October 2006. One month later, Hiller asked Editor Dean Baquet, who had joined with Johnson in opposing the cutbacks, to resign.

Baquet was replaced by James O’Shea, a longtime editor at the Chicago Tribune. O’Shea departed in January, also while protesting cuts ordered by corporate management.